Sunday, July 4, 2010

Washington DC – Part 2

Did you know that the stone in the Washington Monument is two different colors?

Just a note: this entry was WHILE we were in Washington, DC back in May! It appears we have confused some of our readers!

The Cherry Hill RV Park has a “dog walking” service available. For a small fee a person will come to your RV and give your pet two “potty breaks” and a 20 minute walk while you see the sites of Washington. If need be they will even feed your pet for you. Knowing that Raider was being well cared for we spent 10 hours one day and two 12 hour days seeing as many sites as possible. We opted for a Gray Line Tour called “Open Top Sightseeing Tour”

This tour included a very nice courteously bus to take us into and out of Washington each day and allows for an unlimited number of hop on or hop off stops over a two day period. This allowed us to see much more of Washington than we could have on foot and got us out sight seeing much earlier than the public bus and Metro ride into Washington did.

So what did we see? We visited 4 of the Smithsonian museums: the National Air and Space Museum, the National Art Gallery, the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Smithsonian Castle. One of the most amazing things we found out is that all of the Smithsonian Museum are FREE!

The Smithsonian Castle, headquarters for the Smithsonian

We visited the Washington Monument

Work began on the Washington Monument in early 1848, but it wasn’t completed until December of 1884. Due to a 25 year halt in construction. Because they used 2 different quarries for the stone, before and after the construction halt, the stones are two different colors. The history of the construction of the Washington Monument is a very interesting story follow this link to read it: Washington Monument Construction.

We saw the White House

This is the Oval Office. I think that if you look real close you can see President Obama waving to the camera. ;-)

We saw National Cathedral

We took a ride down Embassy Road

We visited the Lincoln Memorial:

We visited the Vietnam War Memorial:

Both the Jefferson Memorial and the FDR Memorial were closed for repair.

We toured the Capitol Building:

We also visited the National Archives and saw the actual Declaration of Independence and the actual Constitution. No pictures are permitted and the light level is kept very low. The Declaration of Independence still looks in pretty good condition, but the ink on the Constitution as faded badly.

3 comments:

We toured Washington D.C. back in 1997 and it was an incredible trip.We were unable to tour the Washington Monument because it was closed for repairs at that time. We did get a fantastic tour of the White House. I'm not sure they are doing that anymore with national security being so tight. We knew a state senator and he got us in. We saw the blue room, gold room etc.

Having a campground that will take care of your pets is such a nice feature. It really gives you that peace of mind to stay longer and see things. We'll have to remember that campground for a future trip to Washington D.C.

Glad you all had a great time and saw so many things that make our country so great!!

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About Us

We are Grant and Kathy Webb, welcome to our website! With careful planning we retired in our mid-50s on January 1, 2008 so, that we could explore the parks, monuments and wildlife refuges of North America. This blog is intended to keep family, friends and anyone else interested up to date with where we are and what we are doing. This will not be a daily diary; we will update as time and Internet connections permit.
Our hobbies are bird watching and astronomy so, if you know of a great birding spot or dark sky site in an area we are visiting please let us know.